


An Icebox Where My Heart Used to Be

by ladyknightanka



Series: We Bought a Zoo [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Animals, Alternate Universe - Penguins, Courtship, Eggs, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Wooing, Zoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 10:08:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/620947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyknightanka/pseuds/ladyknightanka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matters of the heart are difficult enough when you're a giant human, especially when race and class become involved. Try being less than a foot tall, blue, and in love with the penguin royalty next door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Icebox Where My Heart Used to Be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [grlkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grlkat/gifts), [Synnerxx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synnerxx/gifts), [bluebells](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebells/gifts).



> I...wrote a zoo AU, where Adam and Michael are penguins. Think Penguins of Madagascar + And Tango Makes Three...
> 
> ...I'M SORRY. THIS IS CRACK. I blame certain people for this. They know who they are. ;-P

-

An Icebox Where My Heart Used to Be

-

  
A piercing cry rings outside Adam's diminutive dirt burrow.  
  
He freezes in his nest and cranes his neck, unwilling to leave its safety and warmth to investigate, but there is no cessation to the cacophony. Adam releases a shrill whistle, a sigh, from his beak, and squirms out of his haven.  
  
On his way to the exit, he picks up a shiny stone in one small, blue-downed flipper. It's his most precious possession, gifted to him by his mother before the humans took him away from her, and if some larger predator is here to steal from or even kill him, Adam would like to keep it close. At the very least, with utmost reluctance, he can use it for self-defense.  
  
He skulks out of the cave opening, waddling at his very slowest, and falls back onto his tail, his mother's stone dropping in the process, when a tall, dark shadow looms over him, blocking out the sun with its mass. It cocks its giant head. “Hello, Adam.”  
  
Upon registering the familiar voice, Adam puffs up in affront and struggles to stand. He bats away the _thing's_ gargantuan flippers as they move to pick him up, instead scrounging for Kate's stone.  
  
“Michael,” he spits, “what are you doing here, you big, stupid lump? This is the tropical penguins' exhibit, _not_ the arctic one! Go away!”  
  
“Adam,” Michael murmurs again. Although it's impossible to read an expression on the minute ebony pinions that make up his face, common to emperors, his shoulders slump. Something twinges beneath the white fluff of Adam's chest, the only white on his otherwise slate blue body.  
  
He wishes the stupid penguin exhibit zookeeper, Zachariah, would fix the broken netting that separates Adam's swimming area from the arctic one. Not only does cold water flow between the two, but more unsavory creatures often creep in, too – like Lucifer the leopard seal, with his teeth bigger than Adam's whole body, whom Michael had rescued Adam from in the first place, the reason they'd met at all.  
  
“What do you want from me?” Adam mutters.  
  
Michael doesn't immediately reply. Instead, he stands perfectly still and scrutinizes the tiny fairy penguin till he fidgets. Then, only when Adam decides, screw size, he's about the peck the pride out of the larger penguin, Michael steps aside to display the impressive pile of fish and rocks behind him. The former are a sleek silver, taller than Adam, that gleam beneath the midday sun, as the latter also sparkle to show off their inner mineral structure.  
  
Adam sucks in a deep breath. Michael fidgets from webbed foot to webbed foot. “If I was your mate,” he begins slowly, forcing Adam to snap his jaw shut, “I could provide for you. Anything you wanted.”  
  
“Oh, Michael, not this again,” Adam says. His head is cradled in his flippers and the words are muffled into them. He wishes he was an ostrich, like Chuck three exhibits down, so hiding himself this way could feel more secure. He wishes he could let himself be stupid, allow himself to believe the way Michael does, but he just can't. The world is as shallow as his pool for him. “You're an emperor from the South Pole. You're penguin _royalty_ ,” he continues, because Michael doesn't do anything. “I'm a pathetic little blue bite-sized snack to the things you're friends with. You think I can't hear those other emperors, your buddies Uriel and Raphael, laughing at me? We're not meant to be together. I-I can't even lay an egg for you. I couldn't even if I was a girl.”  
  
More than he hates Michael for immediately trudging forward, Adam hates himself for the way his throat closes up, like he's swallowed a fish bones and all. Humans say the truth will set you free, but if that's true, why is it so hard to speak it? Why is it easier to believe that humans are just a bunch of liars?  
  
Michael stoops to pick him up and Adam doesn't fight his arms, nor the way he nuzzles his head against Adam's cheek. He tells himself he _can't_. That's yet another troublesome issue with all this, with their burgeoning union – yet another difference between them to overcome. He can't stop Michael from worming into his exhibit or his heart, not when the other penguin is so much stronger.  
  
“We can be whatever we want,” Michael whispers. His words burn fierce as the fire it would take to melt his glacial home. “I'm not a dreamer, Adam. I'm logical, too, like you. But I've seen things happen. What of those polar bears, the Winchesters, and the oddball snow-bunting they've made a home with? What of the old walrus they call their father, whom they all so deeply respect? At least you and I are both penguins. What would it hurt to try?”  
  
“My pride, when this inevitably fails,” Adam mumbles into Michael's shoulder, but his small arms wiggle to escape from their place pressed to the emperor's chest, so they can wrap around Michael's neck and cling. Their heartbeats thrum through their respective plumes, echo into one another, resound together. Being held this way reminds Adam of life in his mother's nest in Australia, though he hardly remembers it or her. Michael kneels to set him down all too soon and begins to wade through his pile of courtship offerings. “What are you doing?” Adam inquires, unable to see over the taller penguin.  
  
Rather than respond, Michael shifts to the left. Adam blinks at the sizable brown stone he's uncovered. It's oval, swelling on one end more than the other, and looks almost like...  
  
“It's not an egg,” Michael informs him quickly, one foot dragging through the sand ahead of him, a sheepish gesture Adam has never before seen. “Not yet. If you wouldn't be averse, however, we could look after it together?”  
  
“Together?” Adam mulls over this for a moment. He reaches out and pets the not-egg. Its surface is smooth, the spots that dapple it nearly pretty. “ _Together_ ,” he finally punctuates. “Okay. Yeah. Let's do that.”  
  
Michael arches his neck up to the sun, then bows and points his beak to the ground. Adam regards the emperor for a few seconds, but eventually mimics the motion when Michael doesn't relent, which seems to satisfy him back into an upright position. They waddle in tandem to Adam's hovel and seek to expand it as fairy penguin mates do together. Michael and the not-egg will have to fit, after all, when Michael isn't on one of his nomadic emperor treks through his own exhibit.  
  
Zachariah returns to find them huddled inside the now more ample dwelling, after a frantic search for an assumed missing Michael. He's surprised by the not-egg and their domesticity, but after a single violent reaction to forcibly separating them, he decides to make the best out of the situation. With the masses and money the zoo's new attraction brings to them, it's not really much of a sacrifice.  
  
In fact, Zachariah is thinking of introducing an _actual_ egg to the pair. You know, for curiosity's sake.

-

And They Lived Swimmingly Ever After...

-

**Author's Note:**

> I've been meaning to write a sequel to this. An _egg_ venture, if you will. *shot* I may still, one day! I hope it was a fun read?


End file.
